


Candy Cane Races

by whenineternal



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, Santa's Elves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:15:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28301454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whenineternal/pseuds/whenineternal
Summary: “I have to ask.” Jaehyun smiles up at Doyoung from his perch on his friend’s sturdy shoulder and Doyoung rolls his eyes as if he already knows what the question is. “Was it Donghyuck that cut the wires?”
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung
Comments: 8
Kudos: 100





	Candy Cane Races

**Author's Note:**

> ✦Merry Christmas✦

Jaehyun’s favourite day of the year is definitely 23rd of December. For most elves it’s the big day and for his best friend it’s definitely the day that comes after that, but for him it’s always been the 23rd of December. (And not at all because he gets to watch Doyoung run around like a maniac fixing every problem that arises — because there’s always a lot of them — that’s simply not true no matter what Donghyuck says). It’s because he gets to spend the entire day doing nothing but play with his reindeers as they get ready for the big day. Or night really, but that’s all the same at this time of year. But doing candy cane races with Prancer and Dancer, and apple bobbing with Comet usually doesn’t involve a silent staring contest with Cupid from inside the even-tempered reindeer’s open booth.

“He’s tired of me taking up his space,” a familiar and favoured voice sounds from the floor of the booth and he is hard-pressed to control the smile on his face when he slips inside and drops to the straws next to his best friend. 

“Probably because you take up so much of it,” he jokes at Doyoung who has pressed himself into a corner with his arms wound tightly around his legs. 

“Shh, I’m trying to hide,” Doyoung hisses and reaches out to press a hand over his mouth, going so far as pinching his lips together. He wonders what kind of problem could be bad enough to make Doyoung hide from his responsibilities and so he asks as much only to get a scathing glare in return.

“None!” Doyoung hisses loud enough to make Cupid grunt and stomp a hoof in disapproval before leaving the stables entirely. Jaehyun can’t say he blames him.

“I’m hiding because if they can’t find me then they can’t report another problem to me! As if it wasn’t bad enough that the reindeer harness snapped when we were trying it on,  _ someone _ misplaced the Tardis so I spent two hours looking for it-”

“Are we really calling it that?” Jaehyun interrupts and pokes at the little blue telephone box in Doyoung’s hand. 

“Not officially but it’s what everyone calls it so-”

“Best to just go with it,” he interrupts again but it’s not like Doyoung really minds. He’s probably the only one allowed to interrupt the Head Elf continuously without consequence. He calls it best friend privilege but he’s pretty sure Doyoung calls it a menace. 

“What was the other thing?” he asks so he’ll know exactly how terrible of a day Doyoung is having, but also in case Donghyuck did something stupid that he can hold over his head until next year. 

“Someone managed to cut the power in the workshop, and I mean cut as in literally. I had to splice five wires because apparently sawing off only one wasn’t enough. I don’t think the exposed-wires-look is worth it, but that’s not my call to make sadly.”

He can feel the agitation seeping out of Doyoung like a dark cloud and scoots over to lean his head on his shoulder and exchange some of that negativity with his own happiness and contentment. He could never do what Doyoung does. Sure, the fixing things and running around he could do easy, but the keeping order and leading thousands of creative and more often than not scatter-brained elves is so far out of his range of capabilities he can’t even imagine it. 

“Everything has to be perfect tomorrow, or at least better than last year. I don’t want to go back to making toys because the big guy thinks he needs to replace me,” Doyoung says quietly, hiding his face in Jaehyun’s hair.

“He’d be stupid to even consider it,” Jaehyun states only to be interrupted by Doyoung quietly exclaiming his name in a tone that suggests he said something utterly scandalous. Which he did.

“I’m not saying he’s stupid! I’m actually saying he’s  _ not _ because he’s  _ not _ going to do that!”

Doyoung hums and moves his arms from holding himself to holding Jaehyun, and it’s so intimate Jaehyun is hard-pressed not to read too much into it. Doyoung never really gave him a proper answer, after all. 

“I have to ask.” Jaehyun smiles up at Doyoung from his perch on his friend’s sturdy shoulder and Doyoung rolls his eyes as if he already knows what the question is. “Was it Donghyuck that cut the wires?”

“No it wasn’t Donghyuck, he’s being surprisingly quiet actually.” Doyoung says it like it’s the strangest thing he could think of, but Jaehyun knows his voice well enough to detect the tinge of fondness under it all. Donghyuck might get on his nerves — intentionally as well — ninety-nine percent of the time, but Doyoung loves his little brother more than life itself. 

“Well … Hyuckie might live to be an annoyance, but he still cares about you. He knows how much you have on your plate these days without adding a prank-loving little brother on top of it all.” Doyoung snorts loudly at his words and pushes him away only to change his mind a second later and pull him back into his side. The clinginess is nothing new and shouldn’t make his heart flutter hopefully in the way treacherous, hopeful hearts tend to do, but the fact that Doyoung doesn’t treat him differently makes him think saying the things he did wasn’t a mistake after all. 

Their short-lived peace is shattered a moment later by a hesitant clearing of a throat and an even softer voice saying, “Mr. Head Elf Sir Doyoung-sir.” The awkwardness makes both of them wince.

“Yes Shotaro?” Doyoung lifts his head for a second before burying his nose in Jaehyun’s hair again. The young elf is standing with his back to the stall — probably too embarrassed to look at them — and he clears his throat once more before listing off all the matters that have arisen and need Doyoung’s attention. There’s a total of five bullet points, ranked by importance and urgency. Doyoung sighs deeply and it tickles Jaehyun’s ear in an entirely good way. 

“Thank you, can you tell them all I’ll get right to it?” he says as he begins to stretch and Shotaro chirps an affirmative and zooms off. 

Doyoung begins to draw away from him and Jaehyun isn’t fast enough to stifle the disappointed whine that slips from his mouth. 

“I gotta go,” Doyoung whispers and the smile on his face is regretful, but he has his duties. That doesn’t mean he has to do it all on his own.

“Don’t worry about the sleigh, okay? I can fix that,” Jaehyun says as they’re brushing straw from their trousers and delaying leaving the stall. “The reindeers are my responsibility, I know how their equipment works. I got it.”

“But that’s not your job, you have to be with the reindeers, make sure they’re prepared for tomorrow,” Doyoung protests, but it’s weak. 

“It’s okay, Chenle and Jisung can do that-” “But you love doing that,” Doyoung interrupts and Jaehyun smiles and plucks a last piece of straw from the other’s sleeve and says, “yeah, but I want to help you.”

He knows, when Doyoung’s eyes widen a tiny bit and go soft like dark puddles, that he hears the underlying sentiment in those words as well as Jaehyun does; there is something he loves more.

Doyoung brushes a hand through Jaehyun’s hair and cups the back of his head while he leans in close to press a kiss on his temple. The display of affection is as platonic as it has always been, but the way he whispers his gratitude into Jaehyun’s ear before he pulls back feels like something more. 

Fixing the reindeer’s harness — and as a bonus, the fairy dust propulsion system in the sleigh itself — takes all day and while he’s sad to have missed the Disney marathon with his reindeers, he doesn’t regret volunteering his help. Doyoung would probably have had it done in half the time, but Jaehyun never adopted the concept of workload distribution and his perfectionist tendencies doesn’t allow half-measures. As a consequence he doesn’t see Doyoung at all the rest of the day — a thing that would bring his mood down on any day but now only tells him that Doyoung trusts him enough to not check up on him. Even so, coming home to an empty house — even Donghyuck is gone as he is wont to be on the day before Christmas — is cold and lonely and he stays just long enough to grab a wool throw from the closet and walks all the way back to the stables. He knows Comet doesn’t mind it if he sleeps in his booth so he locks himself in and spreads the throw over the ground and promptly goes to sleep, dreaming dreams of Doyoung and him and words like  _ I  _ and  _ you  _ and  _ love  _ and  _ forever _ . 

He doesn’t wake until the doors of all the booths fly open close to midday on Christmas Eve, and Comet snorts in his hair before trotting outside with the other reindeer. 

“Have you ever considered you take your job too seriously?” Chenle says where he leans against a pole outside Comet’s booth, Jisung next to him with his arms full of grooming equipment. 

“He overslept, how can he be taking it too seriously?” he says as a brush falls from his tenuous grip and he watches it hit the floor with very little interest. “He just can’t sleep without Head Elf.”

The pseudo-twins leave just like that, uncaring of the state they’ve left Jaehyun in. Why would Jisung say that? As if he’s dependent on Doyoung and not simply in love with him? 

It’s too much to think about right after waking, so he gets up and rolls the wool throw into a messy heap and shuffles his way to the nearest bathroom to clean up. His mouth is dry from all the hay dust and he itches all over and he hears Doyoung’s voice in his head telling him elves aren’t meant to sleep in stables. Right now, he’s inclined to agree. 

After getting himself ready for the day, he joins Chenle and Jisung in the courtyard for the far more important task of preparing the reindeers for the long night ahead. 

It isn’t until the reindeers are all strapped to the sleigh and the big guy himself is throwing the bigger-on-the-inside gift sack into the back of it that he realizes he hasn’t seen Doyoung in more than twenty-four hours. Still he keeps to the sidelines — staying by Comet’s side with ear scratches and encouraging words for another successful ride — and only watches Doyoung thrive in his element, quietly accepting all the praise he so rightfully deserves. He outdid himself this year; everything planned to perfection and executed flawlessly. He’ll never say it out loud, but Doyoung inspires more dedication in the elves than even the big guy himself. They really couldn’t ask for a better Head Elf and even though he’s said so multiple times already, he makes a note to tell Doyoung again when he gets the chance. 

“Another year, another success,” he tells Doyoung when they finally meet, eyes still glued to the fading shape of Santa and his reindeers in the sky. 

“The end result is a success, the road to getting there still needs some work,” is the predictable reply Doyoung gives and Jaehyun wraps his hands around Doyoung’s elbow and clings to his side, shaking him a little to get that strict Head Elf out of his head at least a little bit. 

“You’re done for the year, don’t start planning next year right away!” he exclaims softly and turns his face towards Doyoung. His breath catches in his chest at the pretty blush to Doyoung’s cheeks and he clears his throat in an attempt at covering it up. 

“That’s not true,” Doyoung says, turning his head to look Jaehyun in the eye in all seriousness. “I’m not quite done for the year yet. There’s still one more task I have to solve.”

He takes Jaehyun’s hand and pulls him along to the back of the stables where a cherry blossom tree stands perpetually in bloom — a spot of green and pink in between all the snow. It’s the exact place they stood only days before, when Jaehyun bared his heart to Doyoung and got only a vague response of little substance in return. The significance isn’t lost on him. 

“I haven’t slept in thirty-two hours and I feel like crap, but I want to do this now so we’re doing it now,” Doyoung says, hands holding Jaehyun’s tightly and eyes steady and warm as they look into his. He knows then exactly what Doyoung is going to say — it’s written black on white in those expressive eyes — and despite himself, his eyes well with unshed tears. 

“Three days ago you said something to me that I wasn’t in the right state of mind to give a proper answer to, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t know what that answer would be. I knew it the second I heard you say it because I love you too. And I … I’m sorry, I had planned to say a whole grand thing because you  _ did _ , but my head isn’t working and I really just want to kiss you-” He barely gets to finish before Jaehyun seals their lips together, cupping Doyoung’s face in both his palms and pulling him impossibly close under the drooping pink canopy of the cherry blossom tree. 

“It’s okay because I really want to kiss you too,” he says belatedly once they part and Doyoung doesn’t let him go far, locking him in with an arm around his waist and a kiss far too warm and enticing for Jaehyun to ever want to think about anything else. 

“You know we’ve done this whole thing the wrong way round though, right?” Jaehyun laughs into Doyoung’s mouth after the twentieth or thirtieth kiss he doesn’t know, he’s too busy to keep count. “We did the move in together and raised a kid before we even kissed, much less tied the knot.”

“Raised a kid?!” Doyoung laughs and Jaehyun feels it in his own chest with how close they are. “You mean Donghyuck? I’ll give you sole credit for raising  _ that _ menace.” He goes in for another kiss but is cut off by a yawn that moves through his entire body with how insistent it is and Jaehyun laughs lowly and wraps an arm around Doyoung’s waist to hold some of his weight as they begin the long trek to their modest house near the edge of town. 

“I’m glad you didn’t, but you know this could have waited until tomorrow. It’s taken us more than five-hundred years to get here, another day wouldn't have made much difference,” he says and Doyoung tightens his arm around his waist and sighs into his ear before he says, with a cheeky voice, “I know that, but if I had waited until tomorrow I wouldn't have a reason to pull you into my bed tonight,” and just like that, Jaehyun’s pointy ears burn so red they may very well glow in the dark.


End file.
